Kilravock Castle... had a curse: if a gooseberry bush that grew at the top of their main tower died, so too would the male line. Why there was a bush on their roof in the first place is not clear. Maybe it was wind-seeded; maybe a gardener was going for a Babylonian look. In the late 1980s, the bush started to wither. The owner, Elizabeth Rose... made numerous frantic attempts to get a cutting from the original to take root, but it failed each time. Replacement with a brand-new gooseberry bush was apparently not valid in the small print of the curse. The bush died, the male line died soon after, and Kilravock became a Christian youth hostel.

...a witch-haunted bog, memorable for having nearly swallowed up David Hume the historian, who was a native of Ninewells, in the neighbourhood. Hume missed his footing in the mire, and sticking fast, called for assistance, and was at last heard by some people, who ran to give help. Seeing, however, that it was Hume "the unbeliever," they turned back from the amiable philosopher, remarking, "Na, na, the deil has him, let the deil keep him." Mr Somerville mentions, that Hume got out of the bog, and wrote his history afterwards, but does not relate the means by which the philosopher and historian escaped an absorption of his body, analogous of the absorption his mind had undergone in metaphysical mier. The "deil" would have had him both ways, the story goes, but for a compassonate milkmaid, who helped him out, after compelling him to say the Lord's prayer, as a proof that he was a true Christian.

Someone once asked him why he hated the Scots so much. "You are mistaken, Sir," he said; "I do not hate the Scotch; neither do I hate frogs, provided they keep in their native element; but I do not like to have them hopping about my bedchamber."